Criminality in the Indian political system

In their own long-term interest, all political parties must jointly agree to stop sponsoring criminal candidates

Criminality in politics, or more pointedly, criminals sitting in our Parliament and legislatures, is an issue that has for long been debated in many forums and has also been at the forefront of reform proposals sent by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to the government. With elections to five States under way, and the 16th General Election due to be completed before May 31, 2014, India is now gripped by that special fever that besets us every five years. Unexpectedly, part of the backdrop already stands influenced by a few recent decisions of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has importantly passed three orders that relate directly to the conduct of elections. The first relates to the distribution of “freebies”, wherein the ECI has been asked to frame guidelines in consultation with political parties. The second is directing the installation of the None-of-The-Above (NOTA) button in the Electronic Voting Machines, which has already been implemented in the current round of Assembly elections. The third is the court’s order of July 10, 2013 in the Lily Thomas vs Union of India matter, wherein the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional Section 8 (4) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. The importance of this order cannot be overemphasised. The position that prevailed before this order was enacted was that all convicted MPs and MLAs enjoyed a three-month period in which to appeal against their conviction, and during this period they crucially retained their memberships in Parliament or legislatures respectively. What has changed is that while they still have the right to appeal, now they immediately cease to be members the House. While previously they were able to file appeals within the stipulated three months without giving up their membership, they managed, in effect, to remain MPs or MLAs often for long years after their terms had expired. Not only have these orders already impacted the elections under way but they will continue to have a profound impact on cleansing our political system.

The Lily Thomas matter was applied by the court prospectively and not retrospectively. The court would have had many reasons not to apply its order retrospectively, not the least of which is that it would possibly have thrown our current polity into disarray. Be that as it may, in the present and future, every parliamentarian or legislator who stands convicted for an offence that leads to a sentence of imprisonment for two years and more, will also be debarred from contesting an election for six years after his or her prison term ends. Moreover and equally importantly, there are offences which are already on the statute book and where conviction (even without sentence of imprisonment) leads to disqualification. These include conviction for rape, for promoting enmity and hatred between and among different classes or groups, conviction relating to bribery, and conviction under the Prevention of Corruption Act, the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) and The Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002 (POTA). Once again, since the grace period for remaining an MP or MLA has ended, this in effect means that the six year axe of debarment comes immediately into operation in these categories of cases as well.

Criminals among MPs, MLAs

Close on the heels of this order, the nation witnessed the jailing of Lalu Prasad, the president of a once nationally recognised political party, the RJD, as well as Rasheed Masood, a former Minister and sitting MP of the Rajya Sabha. While both stand debarred from contesting elections for six years after their jail terms are completed, in effect such a long banishment might well put an end to their political careers. For, as is well known, politics abhors a vacuum.

The abhorrence of criminality in politics is a common thread running through practically every student audience I have addressed across India in the last seven years. They are well aware of the figures compiled by non-governmental organisations such as NEW and ADR from the affidavits submitted to the ECI by contestants. Two vital orders of the Supreme Court in 2002 and 2003 made it compulsory for all candidates to file information regarding any and all criminal cases pending against them, as well as figures of the combined wealth or assets of the candidates and their spouses, and indeed their educational qualifications. With this information, the court hoped that voters could make informed choices about whom to vote for or not. Most of my student audiences knew the statistics; that in the present Parliament as many as 30 per cent of sitting Lok Sabha MPs and 31 per cent of Rajya Sabha MPs have criminal cases pending against them, that the Bihar Assembly (2010) has a high of 58 per cent criminals among its MLAs, while the Uttar Pradesh Assembly (2012) has 41 per cent. The Congress has 21 per cent declared criminals; the Bharatiya Janata Party has 31 per cent. At the other extreme, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha has 82 per cent criminals among its MPs and MLAs.

Is it any surprise then that student audiences inevitably ask what is the point of clean election processes if the end result is to elect tainted men and women?

When the government decided to rush headlong into enacting an Ordinance to counter the July 10, 2013 Order of the Supreme Court, this resulted in a surge of public sentiment bordering on revulsion, against what would arguably have been a very regressive step in the development of our democratic institutions. The dramatic demise of the proposed Ordinance ironically became a critically important milestone in the strengthening of our democratic edifice, which I think many of us realise is still a work in progress.

Three issues

In the rash of commentaries that followed the Supreme Court Order of July 10, followed in turn by the legislative proposals sought to be placed before the winter session of Parliament and finally by the Ordinance that the Cabinet cleared, I would like to comment on three issues. First, it is no secret that many politicians have their own criminal elements to protect and whom they need to use in elections to round up voters. They spend clandestinely and sometimes devise mafia-like strategies to reinforce the “winnability” concept that has now come to be the “mantra” which has displaced any truly democratic relationship between candidates and the public whom they seek to represent. Hence the political establishment quickly closed ranks in favour of the Ordinance.

The second issue to my mind was whether the President (who called in senior Ministers for consultation to raise questions and seek clarifications), would have signed this Ordinance, or whether he would have just let it asphyxiate itself.

The third issue is that it took Rahul Gandhi to speak out and publicly criticise the Ordinance. In the aftermath of his intervention, the cacophony of opinions on our news channels reached a crescendo. One of the few voices that I managed to hear over the din of panellists and anchors, was that of The Hindu’s N. Ram, who cut aside all rhetoric on the non-use of parliamentary language by saying, “Rahul Gandhi single-handedly killed the wretched Ordinance. Instead of acknowledging that, do we need to make a fuss about the words he used?”

For what we must also recognise is that if this Ordinance had been passed, it would have officially endorsed that criminality in parliamentary ranks was perfectly acceptable. It would also have rendered our elected representatives even more distant from our people. Not only that, it would almost certainly have put the Executive and the Supreme Court on a collision course, leading to unnecessarily troubled relations between vital institutions. We have only to look in our own neighbourhood to understand how such conflicts have in varying measure stunted the growth of democratic structures.

I read in the press with increasing disappointment that many political leaders and parties including the Congress and the BJP have since given the ticket in these elections to either criminals or to their family members as proxies. This, sadly, concedes the “winnability” factor over “clean” politics.

Surely the time is finally here for all political parties to jointly agree to step away from sponsoring criminal candidates. It would be in their long-term interest to do so, because now some ground realities have changed, for upon conviction such candidates would have to resign anyway and make way for by-elections. In the short-term, they may win an election, but in the longer term they will, once again, strike a blow to the development of a healthy, wholesome and robust democracy that our freedom fighters fought for, and our constitutional framers had envisaged.

Liked the phrase "Politics abhors vacuum".So ,All the pending cases related to our legislators should take priority in our judicial system at all levels and should be disposed off at the earliest .As it is that our legislators have all the privileges in the world,why dont we bestow above priority when it comes to dealing with their pending criminal cases and trials related to them be publicized in media with the permission of the court.

from:
Rakesh

Posted on: Nov 22, 2013 at 18:32 IST

58% in Bihar and 41% in UP ministers as criminals is pretty alarming. Here we are not talking about better choices but bitter choices left as nominees. In democracy, the government should take care of people who did not vote for them-that is possible by strong and effective legislative and judiciary system. But our judiciary and legislative system has failed to protect us from criminals stand as nominees is unbelievable. Atleast We should not allow these people file for nomination easy and let the voters BEWARE THAT THEY ARE GIVEN BAD CHOICES BY THE PARTY. It will be great if all these details are available before accepting his nomination in a website and news papers with details about the crime they committed,year in which he commited, years in court and why? And 30 days before the elections if 500 people signing a petition to avoid his nomination is filed then he should be not stand in election. SO WE HAVE LEADERS-if we KNOW THEIR BACK GROUND would not even bother to have as maids!!

from:
marudah

Posted on: Nov 22, 2013 at 05:55 IST

Is it enough to have clean politics at the Governing end? So what about the lowest strata of administration? The Panchayats especially are those administrators that reach to the poor public. Not to forget the U.P. incident of a Panchayat President accused of sexual offences. Cleansing must begin from the lowest level. If that is acheived the highest Governing end shall be cleaned automatically.

from:
Soumya Prakash

Posted on: Nov 21, 2013 at 15:00 IST

The onus is on Indian political parties to improve the situation. This needs selection of candidates for each assembly and parliament segment important. Each Party can select a maximum of 10 candidates for each constituency from among the aspirants based on qualification,interest in public affairs, vision and integrity. The final selection must be made through a draw. India needs a strong visionary leadership to lead the masses to a bright future and not into a dark tunnel. Jai Hind !

from:
Vyas K Susarla

Posted on: Nov 21, 2013 at 13:59 IST

Yes, we need to clean up. Is it possible?

from:
vidya

Posted on: Nov 21, 2013 at 13:53 IST

JAADU -Safai-Dhulai is the correct need of the hour- Jaadu is the most appropriate LOGO.
India needs to be cleansed -cleaned - 1.2 billion Indians need clean Governance- Corrupt free- crisp - rock solid management only.
leaders who go down to grass roots levels - ghettos- slums -shanties to check-inspect personally and physically.
Go into the Dirty markets -dirty Toilets- Check the open sewers- drains -clogs- insufficient or no water.
why?instead of sitting in AC ROOMS having body guards and security etc.
the Nethas /Babus should daily inspect the nation street by street-village by village -to check the disaster.
chaos- crowding- jams-pollution-dirt -filth all over.
BETTER TO HAVE OPEN OFFICES OR OPEN PARLIAMENT UNDER THE TREES.

Develop and build -lead India into atop class -clean nation inside and outside.
Let it reflect on the roads-clean - smooth flow like any developed nation on earth ex: Israel- dubai- singapo- lONDON -SHANGHAI-HONGKONG- TOkyo etc.
If they can do -why we can't

from:
thomas

Posted on: Nov 21, 2013 at 13:13 IST

The only way to stop criminals from standing for elections is to publicise their criminality. The public will automatically stop them from winning and that will kill that practice for ever. The media therefore has a big role in publicising, publicising , and repeatedly publicising the politicians corrupt past.

from:
Sri

Posted on: Nov 21, 2013 at 12:33 IST

If in 2009 the author had taken some actions as CEC, things would have changed. This attitude of criticizing people but not taking any action when in power would not work simply Mr. Navin Chawla. People in power should make it count rather than just writing articles once they are out of power. It doesn't help.

from:
Rajesh Varadharajan

Posted on: Nov 21, 2013 at 11:56 IST

In India, people say "cricket is religion", unless it changes to saying , "democracy is the religion" and unless nation building and being patriotic is taken up at religious fervor, there is little hope for this country of 120 crore people. Hope people understand the situation and spend time building nation proactively via democracy.

from:
ambi

Posted on: Nov 21, 2013 at 11:11 IST

Yes, we as a nation need to eliminate criminality from the Indian political system. This has nothing to do with the infamous aborted ordinance, which was opposed vigorously by the common man and by the media, and became a still-born ordinance even before President Pranab Mukherji expressed his reservations about it. N. Ram gives undue credit to the clueless Rahul Gandhi for the last-ditch, blatant attempt of the Congress to save itself from the revulsion of the people.

For a full cleansing of the political system, political parties must adopt, or must be forced to adopt, a zero-tolerance policy towards criminals, transparency in their own funding and should allow state funding of elections to enable honest and capable citizens to bring in the refreshing talent pool now completely excluded by the current venal system.

from:
Vinod Kumar B

Posted on: Nov 21, 2013 at 11:00 IST

It is illogical to assume that political parties would clean up their mess. Also we cannot expect lawmakers to make laws against themselves. It the the common man with their voting power that can force change in this scenario. It is we who have to be smart in choosing our representatives. Another source of hope is our judiciary and election commission who do their best to bring transparency in the system to some extent.

from:
Akshay Dhadda

Posted on: Nov 21, 2013 at 10:20 IST

Loose ended justice, & corruption making fortune out of crimes is all the reason for increse in crimes in all cities, villages in our country.In US there is a city called Las Vegas well known as Sin City, here there are no such Sins like rape, rape of Girl childrens etc.because the police is efficient duty bound justice are met,people afraid for law and order,and minimum imprisonment is 20 years for such crimes, they will not get Jobs in good establishments after their release, they have to work as drivers or maintenance staff.But in our country they escape by paying fortunes, they are felicitated not only by their family but also certain professionals.

from:
Suresh D.R

Posted on: Nov 21, 2013 at 08:05 IST

It is not the issue of criminals participating in politics to be condemned but the politicians becoming criminals and running the country are to be condemned.
The need of the hour is another M K Gandhi.

from:
Gregory

Posted on: Nov 21, 2013 at 07:50 IST

Political parties thrive on criminals. Unless the public stop voting for criminals the situation will not change. The political parties will not learn their lessons unless they are thrown out of power mercilessly. The option to press the "none of the above" button is a right move provided the electorate understand the significance of the option. Let one party take the lead in eschewing selection of candidates with criminal back ground the rest will follow like a herd of sheep.

from:
R Vijaykumar

Posted on: Nov 21, 2013 at 05:46 IST

Australia is sometimes derisively called as a land of convicts based on the origin of its European migrants. India will soon take over this 'title', thanks to the politicians and the Supreme Court.

from:
srinivasan TN

Posted on: Nov 21, 2013 at 04:38 IST

Talking about what our freedom fighters aspired for etc. is pointless. Nobody today votes on the basis of upholding democratic principles and all those wonderful idealistic goals. How many cases are really brought out on the politicians, leave aside how many are convicted? If one were to dig in a few notches deep, most politicians will have plenty of skeletons in their cupboard, not even worthy of assigning them the onerous task of upholding those wonderful ideals for which the freedom fighters gave their lives.

Group Sites

Recent Article in Lead

The people of Delhi voted for Arvind Kejriwal, giving him another chance. A leader, especially a very popular one, needs a House of the People in terms of popular backing. He has gatekeepers, he needs conscience-keepers. »